Did Asus bamboozle the FCC?

Netgear is making some pretty serious accusations against rival Asus in regards to two of the company's wireless routers, the RT-N65U and RT-AC66U. According to a complaint filed with the FCC and subsequent lawsuit, Netgear says the aforementioned routers that sit on store shelves and are available to purchase online emit higher wireless signals than what the FCC allows. Netgear further alleges that Asus conspired with QuieTek Corporation, an independent testing laboratory, to submit false test results to the FCC to ensure certification as part of a grand plan to eliminate Asus' competitors from the wireless market.

No, this is not the new Mac Pro

Way back in January of this year, D-Link unveiled a cylinder shaped "Gaming Router" featuring Qualcomm StreamBoost technology (DGL-5500) with the promise of shipping it sometime in the spring. We're now heading towards the end of summer and are happy to report that if you've been patiently awaiting the retail release of this 802.11ac router, it's now available direct from D-Link and several other online retailers.

No strings attached

Google catches a lot of flak over privacy issues for its various services, but at the same time, the company knows how to create some goodwill for itself, too. Apparently in a giving mood as of late, Google is footing the $600,000 bill to bring free Wi-Fi hotspots to at least 31 city parks, plazas, and open spaces across San Francisco. The installation of free Wi-Fi service will kick off in December 2013 and is expected to be complete by Spring 2014.

A cheap upgrade to 802.11ac territory

Now might not be the best time to upgrade your home networking equipment to 802.11ac since a final standard has yet to be ratified, but if you're gung-ho to make the leap anyway, there are plenty of companies that will oblige. Count Netgear among them. Not only is Netgear offering an upgrade path to 802.11ac, it's new R6100 dual-band router is $100, a relatively cheap price tag considering it's a next-generation router.

BYO media streamer

If Jerry Seinfield worked at Maximum PC reviewing overpriced gadgets, we’re pretty sure he’d be saying: “And what’s the deal with getting charged so much for so little RAM? You know, the 16GB version of the HTC Galaxy 5s costs $199 but the 32GB costs $299? And, what? No expansion slot for additional RAM?”

Note: This review originally appeared in the January 2013 issue of the magazine.

Netgear's latest router is for those who value 802.11ac over 802.11n performance.

The new R6520 Smart Wi-Fi router from Netgear is the company's newest product to support the 802.11ac wireless standard, and it's designed specifically for people who care more about the draft specification than with having the fastest 802.11n Wi-Fi performance in the 2.4GHz band. It's armed with a dual-core 800MHz engine to enable combined Wi-Fi connections at speeds up to 1600Mbps.

Linksys lives on as a Belkin brand

Back in late January Belkin announced it would be buying up the Linksys brand from Cisco, a company that seems utterly determined to exit the consumer market as quickly as possible. It was hard to imagine anything would sour the deal given how determined Cisco is to liquidate non-enterprise brands, but we can now confirm its official.

A road warriors best friend just got smaller.

Road warriors are forced to admit that while wireless broadband has improved at hotels over the years, it’s still far from perfect. When both are offered the speeds are almost always better if you are able to jack in, but with modern tablets that’s not always possible. This creates a captive audience of tech savvy business travelers, and ASUS appears to be eager to cash in.

Routers are a dime a dozen these days, and potential shoppers are bombarded with literally hundreds of nearly identical options. How then are you supposed to narrow the field? Well if range is the most important consideration, and you don’t have any issues with bizarrely phallic objects, then the RT-N12HP router from Asus just might be worth your consideration.

It doesn’t get any easier than this

When we hear hype that something is the “easiest” thing in the world to set up, we usually put on our hip waders and prepare to slog through a waist-high pile of dung, because 19 times out of 20, it's usually a load of crap.

Well, believe us when we say that the Dropcam HD is the easiest Internet camera we’ve ever set up. We mean it. To set up the Dropcam HD, you just plug the camera into your PC via USB. The setup files are stored in flash, which kicks up a configuration utility. This lets you create an account with Dropcam and connect the device to a Wi-Fi network. Once you’ve done that, you unplug the Dropcam HD, move it to the area you want to monitor, and plug it in via the included 2-amp wall wart. That’s it; you’re done and streaming 720p video to the Internet in about two minutes flat. The lens is a wide 107 degrees, which is enough to let you see most of a room. The video quality is good, and while certainly far better than QVGA surveillance cams, the compression is heavy enough that you won’t be picking out license plates with it.